have rather died if she could have
chosen? She didn't want to fall in love with that young ass, Rickards.
And I don't see what she did that was so very awful."

"She managed to let everybody else see, anyhow."

"What if she did? At least she was honest. She went straight for what
she wanted. She didn't sneak and scheme to get him from any other
girl. And she hadn't a mother to sneak and scheme _for_ her. That's
fifty times worse, yet it's done every day and nobody thinks anything
of it."

She went on. "Nobody would have thought anything as it was, if Papa
hadn't been such a frantic fool about it. It he'd had the pluck to
stand by her, if he'd kept his head and laughed in their silly faces,
instead of grizzling and growling and stampeding out of the parish as
if poor Ally had disgraced him."

"Well--it isn't a very pleasant thing for the Vicar of the parish----"

"It wasn't a very pleasant thing for any of us. But it was beastly of
him to go back on her like that. And the silliness of it! Caring so
frightfully about what people think, and then going on so as to make
them think it."

"Think what?"

"That she really _had_ done something."

"Do you suppose they did?"

"Yes. You can't blame them. He couldn't have piled it on more if she
_had_. It's enough to make her."

"Oh Gwenda!"

"It would be his own fault. Just as it's his own fault that he hates
her."

"He doesn't hate her. He's fond of all of us, in his way."

"Wot of Ally. Don't you know why? He can't look at her without
thinking of how awful _he_ is."

"And if he _is_--a little----You forget what he's had to go through."

"You mean Mummy running away from him?"

"Yes. And Mamma's dying. And before that--there was Mother."

Gwenda raised her head.

"He killed Mother."

"What do you mean?"

"He did. He was told that Mother would die or go mad if she had
another baby. And he let her have Ally. No wonder Mummy ran away from
him."

"Who told you that story?"

"Mummy."

"It was horrid of her."

"Everything poor Mummy did was horrid. It was horrid of her to run
away from him, I suppose."

"Why did you tell me that? I didn't know it. I'd rather not have
known."

"Well, now you do know, perhaps you'll be sorrier for Ally."

"I am sorry for Ally. But I'm sorry for Papa, too. You're not."

"I'd be sorry for him right enough if he wasn't so sorry for himself."

"Gwenda, _you're_ awful."

"Because I won't waste my pity? Ally's got nothi